Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Hyung Jin Kim / Walkability is a challenge for most suburban metropolitan areas. Specifically, the Kansas City suburban cities of Overland Park, Olathe, Leawood, and South KCMO have sprawled and disconnected urban patterns and a low average walkability score of 37 out of 100 (Walk Score, 2013, https://www.redfin.com/how-walk-score-works/). The Indian Creek Trail, an existing recreational trail that extends throughout the southern Kansas City neighborhoods, has the potential to improve walkability. It connects major destinations, including residential communities, businesses, and commercial districts throughout the suburban neighborhoods. Many studies have analyzed suburban sprawl and walkability, but few studies have identified the possibility of enhancing existing trail systems to provide for greater mobility, connectivity, and activity. The study examines the feasibility of reusing an existing trail system to act as a catalyst to promote walkability in the Kansas City suburbs. The goal of the project to create a paradigm shift in the way people think about transport and development. The purpose is to identify how centering walkable strategies around an active transportation network can promote walkability in sprawled suburban areas. The question: How can focusing improvement around existing trail infrastructure enhance walkability in suburban areas? has guided the project and helped define strategies for improvement. This project identifies the Indian Creek Trail’s current and potential uses from an in depth community and spatial analysis. Surveys, interviews, and observations were conducted within 13 major destination areas along the Indian Creek Trail. The results were then analyzed to create an evidence‐based design framework that will address walkable concerns. The project results showed there were three primary causes for walkable limitations along the trail network: current transportation trends, suburban development patterns, and social perceptions. Understanding these important aspects of walkability helped identify a framework for improvement. The findings from the analysis determined the site restrictions and prospects of creating a walkable environment along the Indian Creek Trail. The results identified primary locations of needed intervention and revealed major opportunities for connection. The design then applied walkable components based on analysis findings to create nodes of complete communities. Design decisions were tailored to amend community needs and alter traditional transport perceptions. The objective of the designs was to address specific walkable limitations to create reasonable solutions in suburban areas. The project identifies 5 primary components of walkability that can be used to create a walkable plan. Future studies would revolve around implementing the designs and analyzing the effectiveness to create a model that can be applied to enhance walkability for other suburban areas. Ultimately, the results could establish how improved walkability can promote multi‐modal transportation opportunities where population, density, diversity, and funding do not allow for typical transportation or development enhancements.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Howard Hahn / Public parks provide essential green space for people to congregate, exercise, and respite from the city. Urban public parks in the United States began with Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s Central Park in the mid-1800s (Cranz & Boland, 2004). Since then, planners and designers continue to design urban parks to best serve residents. Therefore, understanding user recreation patterns and preferences is critical for urban park design. Several factors influence leisure styles, including ethnicity, that need to be considered by planners and designers. This study examines parks in South Omaha, Nebraska. Residents living in this area make up over ten different ethnic groups. Notably, Omaha’s largest Hispanic community concentration resides in South Omaha. Through quantitative and qualitative research including site analysis, a literature search, precedent studies, and community interviews, important design considerations emerged. This project presents design considerations and a conceptual redesign for two urban parks in South Omaha: Lynch Park and Spring Lake Park. The designs incorporated the leisure preferences and recreation patterns as revealed through interviews of the majority Hispanic community as well as European, Asian, and African minority ethnic groups. Precedent studies and literature research further informed redesign decisions by providing background knowledge on leisure research, design form, and demographic trends. Nevertheless, urban parks should ultimately respond to the users, regardless of cultural backgrounds, to meet the needs and requirements of all South Omaha residents.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Huston Gibson / Play is essential to the development of children, as it serves as the main platform for a child to begin to explore his or her world and understand their physical and social environment. It is not a frivolous activity, but a method of learning. Despite this recognition, many playground designs are still steered, wrongly so, by unwarranted societal fears of safety. Such playgrounds lack developmental benefits due to their composition of isolated, prefab plastic components on an asphalt field. Despite recognition in the late twentieth century that “childhood itself is in danger of extinction”, many playground are still sterile in nature. The time is now for designers to look critically at playground design trends and intervene to improve the quality of the environments our children are exposed too. The positive development of the next generation, our children, depends on it. In the case of the community of La Chuscada in Chinandega, Nicaragua, economic status presents a major barrier to the creation of beneficial learning environments. This project addresses the hardships of implementing a developmentally beneficial playground, and through the collaboration with the Amigos for Christ philanthropic organization and interior architecture student Aaron Bisch, offers solutions to achieve this goal. Culture-specific influences of play are explored and survey data from the community of La Chuscada reveal strategies for the implementation of a nature playground design that offers developmental benefits for the children of the community.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Howard D. Hahn / Landscape architecture’s scope of knowledge and professional practice is continuously broadening. Formalized certification and certification standards do not exist to date; as a result, limiting the depth of knowledge in landscape architects. Beyond competency in core skills like natural systems, site planning and design, and visualization graphics, the general knowledge base of most landscape architects spans a variety of disciplines. This ability to “see the bigger picture” offers certain strengths when “placemaking”, interacting with allied professionals, and leading project teams; yet there are limited opportunities for landscape architects to formally develop a depth of expertise. An extensive literature search identified forty-one knowledge domains that exist in landscape architecture. This report identifies fourteen domains that landscape architects need in current and future work supported with identified core skills and knowledge in the profession. This report seeks to update the Council of Landscape Architecture Registration Board’s (CLARB) identification of knowledge domains by layering skills and knowledge found in sixty current job postings, literature search, and structured interviews. In addition, this report identifies future trends in the profession and marketplace and future dilemmas landscape architects must address in the next twenty years. Content analysis of certification programs offered to landscape architecture students at accredited schools was conducted. A certification precedent study was conducted to understand the range of certification standards that exist in order to propose a standardized certification program. Thirteen themes are identified in the structured interviews that are incorporated into themes of this report. Overall, professionals feel that landscape architecture’s strength as a generalist profession makes the profession unique from its allied professions. However, some professionals acknowledge that as a landscape architect progresses in his or her career, they tend toward areas of specialization. This report suggests that certifications be offered to graduate students and professionals, explains specialization in the profession, and identifies areas landscape architects need to increase their skills and knowledge in, to stay relevant.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Brent Chamberlain / Anthropocentric disturbances are often the main driver behind the population decline of wildlife species. Bat species are of particular concern recently with large declines in populations worldwide. The conservation of bat species relies on knowledge about the relationship between species-specific needs and the effect urban environments have on individual species. Mexican Free-Tailed Bats (MFTBs) are listed on the IUCN Red List and play an important role in many ecosystems within the United States. Austin, Texas is home to the largest urban bat colony in the world, including MFTBs. Austin can continue to benefit from millions of dollars from ecotourism bat viewing sites and the natural control of insect populations provided by this species if urbanization does not cause a reduction in their population. The focus of this research is to develop a quantitative habitat suitability model for the MFTBs in urban areas to increase the understanding of possible MFTB habitat in the Austin Metropolitan area. A geographical information system was used to map the suitability of habitats for MFTBs in urban areas based off a typology for the needs of the species, which was created through a literature review of expert knowledge. This study will help to quantify the relationship between urban environments and the MFTBs, showing that urban areas in the Austin Metropolitan area are suitable for the species. A predictive model, like the one described here, can act as a crucial assessment and planning tool for bat conservation by helping to eliminate challenges of tracking populations or identifying bats during nocturnal activities. This model informs the proposal of planning and design policy changes in Austin, Texas to better support MFTB’s habitat needs. Adjustments to current site plans in Austin are explored understand the effect the proposed MFTB planning policies could have on current development while exploring the application of the MFTB typology at a site scale. Application of the understanding created through habitat-suitability modelling helps to visualize how current projects in Austin, Texas can better support MFTBs to create an understanding of how these policies may affect the development of urban environments.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Katherine Nesse / Many cities around the United States struggle with racially segregated neighborhoods (USA on Race 2013). The existence of isolated neighborhoods continues to reinforce racial distrust and promotes stereotypes. Some of the primary negative consequences associated with residential segregation include unequal job opportunities, greater health risk, high concentrations of poverty, educational constraints, and high building and lot vacancy rates. Residential segregation is an issue in Kansas City, Missouri along Troost Avenue. Troost Avenue is a stark racial dividing line within the city core. West of Troost Avenue, whites account for 88 percent of the population while blacks make up 93 percent of the population to the east (Troost Village Community Association 2013). The intent for this project is to create a resource to help establish and promote social interaction within the Troost Avenue neighborhoods by creating a purpose-driven community garden at the St. James Place apartment complex. The site’s unique location, positioned adjacent to other apartment complexes and subdivisions in the Citadel Neighborhood, had the potential to attract many types of users to the garden site. Through a process of literature review, surveys, interviews, and precedent study analysis, design goals were established. The design proposals for the St. James Place Community Garden focus on increasing site activity, establishing accessibility, and promoting originality.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Mary C. Kingery-Page / Placemaking for Socially Resilient Site Design is a project focused on clarifying and characterizing social resilience. This project used ethnographic methods to answer the question: what qualities of place affect the downtown community’s desires for a temporary landscape in Wichita, Kansas? Through literature review this project further defined what social resilience meant at the site scale. Social resilience was operationalized as social systems ability to maintain function while promoting social trust, reciprocity, collaboration, and character between networks of varying scales (Putnam 1995). Literature review provided the foundational knowledge on creative placemaking, a design strategy used to improve community prosperity through a sense of place and imageability (Artscape 2014). Place is determined by a user’s surroundings, and more importantly the memory of social engagement on site (Fleming 2007). Creative placemaking design strategies are valuable and specific to location. Therefore, it was imperative I incorporated ethnographic research methods to answer my focus question. Ethnographic research investigates cultural patterns and themes expressed or observed by a community (LeCompte et al. 1991). This form of research is unconventional for the typical site design process in landscape architecture. However, it proved to be effective in determining the most successful site use and organization. The ethnographic research allowed me to inventory and document user’s most desirable site needs and programming through the stakeholder design charrette and individual interviews. In November 2014 the Wichita Downtown Development Cooperation requested our team as a partner in developing a temporary landscape for downtown Wichita, Kansas. The site was already selected with the intention of becoming Douglas Avenue Pop-Up Park. Funding for this project was awarded to the WDDC in the form of a $146,025 grant from the Knight Foundation. Using an iterative community feedback process with five ethnographic interviews, I reevaluated the WDDC’s initial Pop-Up Park plan resulting from a community charrette. Recurring themes from interviews were identity crisis of downtown, outdoor preference, lack of residential amenities, negative perception of active and public transit, downtown lifestyle, Wichita as a place for families, and lack of nighttime activation. Using the recurring interview themes, I proposed a plan conducive to social resilience.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Mary C. Kingery-Page / The purpose of this study is to investigate and design public light art installations. The investigation consisted of evaluating select examples of public light installations in order to develop a typology, and designing two site-specific light art installations: one in Wichita, Kansas, and the other, in Denver, Colorado. Though public light art is found in most cities, its potential is often lost or unrecognized. In certain cases, public light art can be ‘plop art,’ which is plopped senselessly without much regard to context or experiential qualities. This project seeks to explore the different types of public light art and to find what approach or qualities should be considered when designing public light art. My approach can be described as artistic research. The methods include an apprenticeship to an artist, a precedent study, development of a light typology, an analysis of site and context, establishing a design matrix for two design projects, and an iterative process of making. Each of these methods were undertaken in order to effectively address my research question: What type of public light art is most appropriate for a specific site and how does it relate to creative placemaking? This project overlaps with a collective project group entitled Creative Place-Making, which is comprised of other fifth-year master of landscape architecture students with an underlying interest in art and design as place-making tools. Each student in the group addressed the site in Wichita, Kansas in a unique way. I addressed this site as a temporary landscape, creating an interactive light installation intended to be in place up to five years. In contrast, I addressed the Denver, Colorado site as a long term landscape, and designed a sculptural illuminating gateway. Each of these light art installations were informed by a particular set of characteristics that make each design site-specific.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Brent Chamberlain / Streets and sidewalks are important public places for a wide variety of activities, such as social interaction and physical activities. Public spaces can provide numerous benefits, such as physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and aesthetic wellbeing; in order to maximize these benefits effective planning and design is critical. However, there is a need to increase empirical data which can support good planning for these public spaces. The purpose of this research study is to better understand how different elements of streetscape design influence a person’s preferences for the design of the space. A streetscape consists of a variety of different infrastructure and natural forms, which are combined together to create a space centered on the movement of people. A survey was conducted with the aims to better understand how key design elements may influence users’ preferences with regard to safety and attractiveness. The project study site is Moro Street in Aggieville Business District in Manhattan, KS. The study and survey were developed using the psychophysical approach, which employed a quantitative methods to analyze the perceptions of Aggieville patrons. The research methods consists of four main parts: variable selection, streetscape design, public survey, and data analysis. An ANOVA was conducted that revealed statistically significant effects related to the preference for streetscape design in terms of safety and attractiveness, as well as a combined average evaluation. Evidence shows that the on street parking (Parking) and green infrastructure (Green Infrastructure) are statistically significant (p < .05), whereas seating and biking had no statistically significant effect on the evaluation of attractiveness. Also, the on street parking (Parking), green infrastructure (Green Infrastructure) and bike lane (biking)are statistically significant (p < .05), whereas seating had no statistically significant effect on the evaluation of safety. Overall, on street parking (Parking) and green infrastructure (Green Infrastructure) are statistically significant (p < .05), whereas seating and biking had no statistically significant effect on the evaluation of both safety and attractiveness. These results support previous work from environmental psychologists, and provide additional empirical evidence to support effective street design.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Stephanie A. Rolley / “Toward a Critical Practice: Tracing Theory Through Design” is an exploration of Elizabeth Meyer’s idea of critical inquiry as a mode and process for professional practice as a landscape architect. Critical practice involves the application of ideas embodied in critical theory as a creative endeavor that is both self-critical and self-renewing. Critical theory is essential in bringing a deeper level of understanding to the design of landscape architecture. Critical practice is the application of critical theory to the understanding of built work and the process of design. Using Meyer’s stated intentions for this design process Noonan develops a personal framework for that process. As the framework develops it rapidly becomes multiple, overlapping, mutually supportive frameworks. Multiple perspectives are gained from using multiple viewpoints represented in theory. The frameworks serve to include the dynamics of change and provide access to a deeper understanding of the interrelatedness of forms and processes inherent to any site or project. Issues of representation become more clear and strategies are identified although this aspect of practice deserves much more attention in the future. Theories, frameworks and sources of knowledge are identified and used to question assumptions and biases, challenge orthodoxies of practice, test ideas, develop written and formal vocabulary and inspire, motivate and guide design work. Ideas and theories used in the framework are related to the formal and textual work of other designers past and present. The framework is tested through application to a design project, which is used as the case study for this paper.